Reincarnation is real. The way it works is when you die, you go before the great HR manager in the sky, who puts your soul (sans memories) into the developing embryo of some human, past or present, let’s say in an alternate dimension somewhere for good measure. Unfortunately for your dreams of being Willie Nelson, you died at a very busy time, and the only embryos available are daughters of nobility, circa 1650, and daughters of middle class American suburbanites with an affinity for Disney movies, circa 2005.
On the one hand, you’d get to wield considerable power over your peers and never have to do an honest days work. On the other hand, you’d get access to modern medical care and Netflix.
The modern world. Who knows what disease I’d die of then, if I’d die in childbirth, or what. Plus for all I know as a modern “princess” I’d marry rich and never have to work anyway. Mostly joking, but I’d at least have the option for best of both worlds.
I’m gonna go with modern princess. There was a lot of civil unrest in the world in the seventeenth century (yeah, like there isn’t any now), and very often royalty didn’t fare so well. So, I’m going with modern medicine, the likelihood of a good education and the Internet.
True, but if you’re a 21st C princess, you get to parade through the mall. If you’re a 16th C princess you get to parade through this. I mean, either way you mainly asprire to being a heartless bitch. Why go half in?
In the olden days, wouldn’t your father marry you off at age 14 to some 40 year old nobleman with whom he was trying to negotiate an alliance who would regularly beat you for not producing a male heir?
Nope, give me the life and luxuries of a modern ‘princess’.
As an aside, allegedly, I descend in part from an illegitimate daughter of one of the Stuarts in exile, who presumably would have become a princess had her father recovered the Throne.
Well I’ll take the actual royalty option, mainly because I’ve already tried the modern suburban American princess option, and it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Yeah, the other choice might well suck, but at least it’d be something different.
Definitely a modern “princess”. No worries about smallpox, arranged marriages, I can vote, use indoor plumbing and other modern technology. Although I do love the clothes. But if I’m rich, I can have them made for me. So it’s win win!
Not true. In many countries, “prince” and “princess” can indeed be titles of nobility. One of the men who killed Rasputin, Felix Yussopov, was a Russian prince. And later in life, Otto Von Bismarck was enobled to be a prince.
That particular scene happened in the 16th century, actually. Catherine de’ Medici was one cold hearted bitch.
That ridiculous meme again. Who hasn’t life “sucked for”?. If anything, being a woman made life a little better, at least no one is dragging you half way around the world to die horribly in some battle or the other. Or do back breaking work in the field , mines, factories etc.
I’m going with the 1600s option. Since I know reincarnation is real, then I can pick again later. And I bet it’s a lot easier to get a second shot at “generic pampered suburban brat” than literal royalty, no matter what timeframe you’re looking at.
A colleague and I are in the process of editing a two-volume collection of essays on royal mothers and daughters (so queens, princesses, the like) from antiquity through to about the mid-sixteenth century for an academic press.
Plenty of evidence there for me to remain quite content to continue living in the present as a plebeian guttersnipe, thanks.
